Comments

  1. says

    Question is, does a huntsman spider make a good mouser?

    Sounds like a new avenue for spider research. Suitable for working from home. :-)

  2. davidc1 says

    I thought the only way to scare an Aussie was to tell him the beer has run out .

  3. DexX says

    I try to be a kind human and treat our hairy little friends nicely, but I’m also a life-long arachnophobe (blame black house spiders for that) so no matter how much I try to tell myself they won’t hurt me, I still get pretty freaked out when I see them. I hate being irrationally afraid, though, so I’ve spent many years dealing humanely with spiders in order to exposure-therapy myself into no more arachnophobia, but sadly it hasn’t as well as I would like.

    That said, I know people who are FAR more afraid than me. A friend called me at 2am once because there was a huntsman on her bedroom wall, and she was so deeply arachnophobic that she couldn’t turn the light off and sleep while it was there. I had to drive over with a jar and a sheet of cardboard to move it outside.

  4. JustaTech says

    Ann Reardon (of the YouTube channel How To Cook That) caught one of these in her house (it ran across her foot!) and ended up taking it to the emergency room so it could be milked to make anti-venom, which I think is very cool and pretty brave (since the spiders can bite through card-stock!).

  5. blf says

    I just got sucked into watching a fair number of the presenter, Ann Jones, other videos.

  6. DanDare says

    I join the list of arachnophobe Australians who try tto do right by our predatory friends.
    Its hard as we get the occasional funnel web tanking across the kitchen floor and my instinct is to instantly smoosh it.
    Fortunately I know which spiders are harmless and, despite visceral reactions, I cope.

  7. DexX says

    @DanDare – God, I would never squish a funnelweb. They’re so beefy! It’d be like dropping half a cup of spider guts on your floor.

  8. davidc1 says

    I ,like the rest of the world is wondering why nearly everything in Australia can kill you ?
    Is it because it’s a a huge continent cut off from the rest of the world .

  9. dannicoy says

    Yeah we occasionally have large huntsmen in the house, and by large I mean that the leg span is significantly larger than my hand span. Recently I discovered a much more interesting large spider, Megadolomedes Australianus, which can walk on water and hunts small frogs/fish.